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Dive into the disturbing mind of one of America's most notorious killers. From demonic dog delusions to hidden arson sprees, we explore the chilling reality behind David Berkowitz's reign of terror. Discover how his crimes paralyzed New York City and forever changed how we view serial killers and their criminal legacies.
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00:00A hundred years from now, people will still know the name Son of Sam.
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at 10 of the creepiest and most unsettling facts about David Berkowitz, a.k.a. the Son of Sam.
00:13In an effort to quell the growing hysteria and track down the killer, police established the Omega Task Force.
00:21He said he was directed by a demon.
00:23David, why did you name yourself?
00:26I am the Son of Sam.
00:27Go out and kill Command's Father Sam.
00:31Have you ever wondered who this Sam actually was?
00:34According to David Berkowitz, it was an ancient demon said to be speaking through his neighbor's Labrador retriever.
00:40After his arrest on August 10th, 1977, Berkowitz told investigators that he had simply been obeying the orders of the demon.
00:47What do you want?
00:49I want you to go out and kill.
00:52Kill!
00:54Kill!
00:56Kill!
00:57Kick-starting one of the most famous aspects of the case and a serious study into Berkowitz's mental health.
01:03At the time, the story of the demonic dog grabbed massive media attention, not just because it's inherently creepy, but because the pop culture of the time leaned heavily into possession and demonic themes.
01:14Coincidence?
01:14You saw The Exorcist.
01:16Everyone did.
01:17You read a lot about demons and exorcisms before the killings?
01:22Maybe.
01:23He made the dog story up.
01:25It's a crack, isn't it?
01:29There's no voices, no demon.
01:32The dog doesn't talk.
01:34No, it was not a coincidence.
01:36He knew what was hot at the time and played directly into it.
01:39Berkowitz never heard demonic voices, and he made the whole dog story up for a variety of practical and psychological reasons.
01:46They all bought it, David.
01:48Didn't they?
01:50Even the shrinks.
01:59Especially the shrinks.
02:01For one thing, he hoped to appear mentally ill, as insanity defenses are a well-known tactic in avoiding the death penalty.
02:09It also guaranteed a media frenzy, and Berkowitz was fascinated by the attention and may have enjoyed fueling his own legend.
02:16Finally, it allowed Berkowitz to mask his true motives, which were painfully ordinary.
02:21Feelings of rejection and anger at a world, specifically its women, that didn't seem to want him.
02:26Did you want to hear voices?
02:28I kept reading about them.
02:30They got kind of tied up with my fantasies.
02:32What fantasies are those?
02:34Girls, revenge, and what you call a sex-star daydreamer.
02:38He was a prolific arsonist before the murders.
02:41Berkowitz had dreams of becoming a firefighter, but instead had to settle for low-paid security work.
02:48New York City was in a desperate state in the 1970s, on the verge of bankruptcy, riddled with crime, and in some places looking like a war zone.
02:56During that time, police were trying to find a noted arsonist who was responsible for countless fires around New York.
03:02We'll give you three guesses who it was.
03:05After his August 1977 arrest, police raided Berkowitz's apartment and found a series of notebooks in which he extensively detailed hundreds of fires.
03:13On May the 13th, things came to a head when Berkowitz threw a petrol bomb into Sam's backyard.
03:20Scared for his life, Sam reported it to the police, but they couldn't find the attacker.
03:26Meanwhile, Berkowitz continued his reign of terror, setting fires in nearby apartment buildings.
03:32When pressed, Berkowitz admitted that he had started well over 1,000 fires throughout the early 70s.
03:38Berkowitz has said in interviews that it gave him a sense of release, and arson is often interpreted as part of a psychological buildup toward more violent acts like murder.
03:47When we look at young people who engage in this kind of behavior, fire setting is a way of them maintaining control.
03:54It's an externalization.
03:56They have these feelings, they want to do something with those feelings, and rather than turning it in on themselves, they turn it outward to start harming other people and other things.
04:05He stabbed two women before the shootings began.
04:08On December the 24th, Christmas Eve, a delusional David Berkowitz decided to make his scrawlings about killing a reality.
04:17Most people remember Son of Sam for his infamous shooting spree that left six people dead and many more wounded.
04:23But his violent streak began a bit earlier in December of 1975.
04:27On Christmas Eve of that year, Berkowitz stabbed two people with a hunting knife.
04:32He was in the area of Yonkers, and he had a knife with him.
04:36And he walked up to a young lady, started stabbing her, she screamed, left on a couple blocks away, and started stabbing another lady.
04:45She screamed, and he left.
04:47The first was never properly identified by police.
04:50The second was 15-year-old Michelle Foreman, who was stabbed six times and was hospitalized for a week afterwards.
04:56These early knife attacks seemed to reflect Berkowitz's descent into violent obsession, graduating from arson to attempted murder.
05:03However, he reportedly found the knife attacks too messy and intimate, which may have pushed him toward using a gun in his later, more famous crimes.
05:11I think the thing that he would have come away with is, I enjoyed that, I liked harming them, but I didn't achieve the outcome that I wanted, and that was to kill them.
05:20He left behind chilling letters.
05:22We now had something concrete, physical evidence.
05:26We had some prints, and we had his handwriting.
05:30Like other famous serial killers, Berkowitz relished in the attention, and believed he was of a superior intellect.
05:36And like other famous killers, he left behind some calling cards in a desperate attempt to boast.
05:41After killing Alexander Esau and Valentina Suriani in April 1977, Berkowitz left behind a letter taunting the police, calling himself a monster, and discussing Sam's influence.
05:51In his fantasy life, he was the son of Sam, a servant of the devil, and at his next killing, he'd leave a letter to Borelli describing his strange, satanic world.
06:02This chilling letter was crudely written, a grammatical mess with countless spelling mistakes.
06:06He then sent a personal letter to Jimmy Breslin, a columnist at the Daily News, this one far more poetic and with correct spelling.
06:14It's unclear why the letters were so different in nature, with some theorizing mental illness or the idea that Berkowitz was putting on an act.
06:21When Joe first showed me that letter, my immediate reaction was, this is a guy that's trying to build a reputation for himself, so that he'd be known, that his name would be recognized, when people heard his name, they'd be frightened, it would show he was powerful and he had an identity.
06:42People changed their appearance to avoid him.
06:44Maybe once every few weeks you find the right girl, the right place, the right time.
06:49I never knew what I was looking for, but I knew her when I saw her.
06:54As the son of Sam's body count rose, people began to notice a pattern.
06:58By the spring of 1977, the son of Sam had been active for nearly a year, and all of his female victims had long, dark hair.
07:06Naturally, it seemed like the killer was working with a physical motive.
07:09When the public got wind of this, pandemonium broke out as women desperately attempted to camouflage themselves so as not to become another victim.
07:16The son of Sam Killer, who has been targeting young women with shoulder-length hair, has caused panic-stricken brunettes to run to their hairdressers to dye their hair blonde as protection against this madman.
07:27Beauty stores quickly sold out of wigs, women cut their hair short, and others dyed their hair bright colors like blonde or red.
07:34Paranoia was rampant in the Big Apple throughout the summer of 77.
07:38Hey, Vinny.
07:39Stay where you are.
07:40Stay right where you are.
07:41Well, come on, I gotta cut her hair.
07:43He planned to commit terrorism.
07:45The police had captured Berkowitz just in the nick of time.
07:49Using the semi-automatic rifle found in his car that weekend, the son of Sam was planning a mass shooting.
07:56If the son of Sam hadn't been caught, then his violence might have escalated into outright terrorism.
08:02Police observed Berkowitz's belongings and found heavy weaponry, including a shotgun and a submachine gun.
08:08He told investigators that he planned on using this gun at a Long Island nightclub in order to, quote,
08:13go out in a blaze of glory.
08:15But that's not all.
08:16They also found rambling notes in which Berkowitz wrote of his desire to kill at least 12 more victims.
08:22Let's be thankful that he was caught when he was.
08:24The letter described Berkowitz's plan to machine-gun teenagers at a nightclub in the Hamptons.
08:30Zigo's risk in breaking into the car had paid off.
08:33It took the largest manhunt in New York's history to catch him.
08:36He used a .44 caliber handgun to shoot innocent people in three of the city's five boroughs
08:41in more than a dozen seemingly random attacks.
08:45The crimes led to one of the biggest manhunts in the city's history.
08:47To this day, many people consider the hunt for the Son of Sam to be the largest manhunt
08:52in the history of New York.
08:54No other criminal has gripped the city quite like him.
08:57The seemingly random nature of the shootings made it hard to establish a pattern,
09:01and the fact that they occurred in different boroughs complicated response coordination.
09:05You held an entire city in thrall.
09:08Girls got their hair cut so you wouldn't single them out.
09:11Discos closed early.
09:13It was the largest task force New York ever assembled.
09:16When it became obvious they were dealing with a serial killer,
09:18the NYPD formed a dedicated 200-person task force called Operation Omega,
09:23which conducted stakeouts and used early computerized data systems
09:27to manage the flood of information.
09:29In fact, when Berkowitz was finally arrested,
09:31he reportedly asked what took so long.
09:34Night after night, a massive task force patrolled the streets across New York
09:38and staked out lovers' lanes.
09:41But no one knew if, when, or where the killer might strike again.
09:45His apartment was covered in satanic graffiti.
09:48That writing on your apartment walls, what was that about?
09:55Sometimes the voices came from inside the walls.
09:58When the NYPD searched Berkowitz's apartment,
10:01they found it in disarray,
10:02with the walls covered in satanic-style graffiti
10:05scrawled in red paint or marker.
10:07There were also various holes punched through the walls,
10:09and bizarre messages such as, quote,
10:12Hi, my name is Mr. Williams, and I live in this hole.
10:15And I live in this hole.
10:27According to news accounts at the time,
10:29the graffiti included references to Sam,
10:31tying into the bizarre narrative that Berkowitz had spun about the demonic dog.
10:35While some have theorized that Berkowitz was part of a satanic cult,
10:39there is no credible evidence linking him to any broader group.
10:42And most experts believe that the graffiti stemmed solely from his own disturbed psyche
10:46and constructed mythology.
10:48Any time I speak about his apartment,
10:50my body starts to chill,
10:52because it's something I had never seen before.
10:54Before we continue,
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11:10His publicity forced a new law.
11:12You know, two people are writing books.
11:14Your neighbor and some guy you gave your life rights to for whatever reason.
11:19I made a legal dispute with him.
11:21Almost immediately upon his arrest,
11:23people speculated that Berkowitz would go to hungry filmmakers and book publishers
11:27in an effort to sell his story.
11:29So, a new law was swiftly passed,
11:31which is now known as the Son of Sam Law.
11:33This new law prevented criminals from making money off the publicity of their crimes,
11:38say through books, movies, and interviews.
11:40That book is going to move like Big Macs.
11:42The guy who talks to dogs, hears demons.
11:45Crazy sells, man.
11:47Instead, all income earned through these revenue streams
11:50would be turned over to the families of the criminals' victims.
11:53While the intentions were good,
11:55the law proved controversial and was later deemed unconstitutional.
11:58They were eventually rewritten.
12:01And dozens of states now have some form of Son of Sam law,
12:04though their scope and enforceability vary.
12:06There's no Son of Sam law in Nevada.
12:09That was ruled unconstitutional.
12:11So, I'm free to write a book about all this.
12:14The story will be worth millions.
12:17Freaks are always good box office.
12:19Do you know any other creepy facts?
12:21Be sure to tell us about them in the comments below.
12:23He kept saying he needed blood.
12:25He demanded blood.
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